Minimum Post Count For Community Discussion/Political Forum?

Maybe this is just a rant, but I am bothered by the number of people who make their first posts in the Community Discussion and Politics, Religion, Social Issues Forums. I always thought this was a forum about macs, since all of the mac stuff is at the top and Community Discussion is at the bottom. It also seems that most of the Muckrakers in the Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum are newbies just trying to get a rise out of people for fun. Has anyone else considered whether or not it would be helpful to this forum to put a minimum post count on the community discussion forum?

Perhaps only macrumors 604 members should be allowed to post in Community Discussions. That would reduce the amount of chat posts many have to trudge through. But alas, we still have a certain mad jew to deal with.

There is a 100 post minimum in the Political etc forum, but many of the threads there starts out as Community threads, without any posting restrictions... so newbies have a window to participate before the mods/gods move the thread...

Staff Member

There is a 100 post minimum in the Political etc forum, but many of the threads there starts out as Community threads, without any posting restrictions... so newbies have a window to participate before the mods/gods move the thread...

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Our intent (which we're admittedly not perfect at observing) is to close or Wasteland those threads because the original poster didn't qualify to start the thread. Sometimes we make exceptions, such as for current events.

Ah, but I was (mostly) referring to newbie responses to threads, not threads started by newbies (I've not seen too many of these kinds of threads started by newbies, probably because they are deleted/wastelanded before I notice them ).

Let's just stop everyone with under a hundred posts being able to post anywhere...

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That is a very good idea, Applespider. New users should not be allowed to post in any forum until they reach 100 posts. That will get rid of the trolls and spammers, yet keep the signal-noise ratio very high.

Let's just stop everyone with under a hundred posts being able to post anywhere...

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Reminds me of the high school editorial I wrote advocating mandatory retroactive abortion.

I'm going to bet that either people are truly opinionated and want to express themselves, and/or that people find it easier to post often in the political threads because you can more easily post and refine an opinion there than in the other advice and help threads. When you are giving advice, you want to make sure you first suggestion is the best you can offer, whereas in the more open topic threads, you can offer up an opinion and refine it as the discussion merits.

You forgot the best part. Your post count doesn't go up when you post there. Why do you think mad jew stays out. Sorry, had to bandwagon on the 604s.

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Nah, it's all those people who use nouns as verbs that keep me away from the ol' political forums.

Kidding mate.

Some of the most interesting threads I've read have been started by relative newbies, no doubt under the 100 post limit. If we take away newbies' rights to start threads (or even post in) the community section, I think we'll be losing a lot of potentially good members and possibly encourage even more useless posts in the news sections.

A lot of forums limit the "unrelated" topics that you cant post in until you reach a certain number of posts. Most of the time they wont even show up on the list unless you have a certain number of posts. I think this is a good idea, it helps reduce trolling and changing a forum's topic. Of course, I myself am not too high on my post count...

Restricting all topics to people with over 100 posts seems a little drastic to me since no one could ever get to 100 posts if they can't post...

Surely 50 or so posts would be OK for the political forums? Is anyone really going to post 50 times just so they can say some racist comment or other trolling in the political forums? Especially as they will get banned after one post?

Surely 50 or so posts would be OK for the political forums? Is anyone really going to post 50 times just so they can say some racist comment or other trolling in the political forums? Especially as they will get banned after one post?

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There are people with over 500 posts that seem to be trolling around and stirring up trouble too with useless posts and threads, As this forum grows its just going to be more of a problem and we will just have to deal with it.

There are people with over 500 posts that seem to be trolling around and stirring up trouble too with useless posts and threads, As this forum grows its just going to be more of a problem and we will just have to deal with it.

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Some people want to spam to get a higher post count! I mean I would love to be a 604, but spamming is out of the question for me.

Staff Member

There are people with over 500 posts that seem to be trolling around and stirring up trouble too with useless posts and threads, As this forum grows its just going to be more of a problem and we will just have to deal with it.

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Just let us know when you spot such things. Our cleanup crews are always walking around with their brooms and dustpans.

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